Uzbekistan: a 12-Day Silk Road Itinerary

There is a precise moment when Uzbekistan clicks. Usually it is your second evening in Bukhara, once the tour groups have gone back to their coaches and you find yourself alone on a square five centuries old, with a cooling cup of tea and a minaret turning pink above you. That is when you understand why the caravans stopped here rather than anywhere else.

The trouble is that most guides stop at “Samarkand is beautiful”. They will not tell you that you have to declare your phone’s IMEI number to customs, that vaping has been banned outright since April 2026, or that Afrosiyob train seats go on sale 60 days ahead and the good departures disappear fast. Those are the details that separate a smooth trip from ten days of administrative friction.

What follows is a full 12-day Silk Road itinerary: entry rules checked against official sources, the real trains with their numbers, an honest budget, and for every stop the places that are actually worth booking. Anything I could not confirm from an official source is flagged as such.

Uzbekistan at a glance, before you book anything

The visa, passport, registration and restricted-zone points below come from the travel advice published by the French foreign ministry, updated on 15 September 2026. Those pages change, so check them again before you go.

One thing to settle first: your nationality

This guide was originally written for French readers, and the entry rules quoted here are the ones the French foreign ministry publishes for French passport holders. Uzbekistan applies different rules to different nationalities, and the lists change.

So before anything else, check your own government’s travel advice for Uzbekistan. If you do need a visa, Uzbekistan runs an official e-visa service, but be careful: two addresses circulate for it and I could not establish with certainty which one is current. Visa portals are a classic target for lookalike scam sites, so reach it through your nearest Uzbek embassy’s own website rather than through a search result.

Everything else in this guide, the trains, the seasons, the money, the itinerary and the hotels, applies whatever passport you hold.

2026 entry rules: the six things other guides leave out

This is the least glamorous part of the article and by far the most useful. Uzbekistan has made tourist access enormously easier in recent years, but the country remains administratively strict. The French foreign ministry describes customs checks as very thorough on the way in and on the way out.

1. No visa, but a passport valid six months

French nationals enter without a visa for stays of up to 30 days. Beyond that a visa is required. The passport must be valid for at least six months from your planned return date, not your departure date. That distinction is what gets people turned away at the gate.

One point rarely mentioned: a French emergency passport or laissez-passer will let you leave the country, but Uzbek authorities accept neither for entry nor for transit. If your passport is stolen while you are there, you can get home, but you cannot come straight back.

2. OVIR registration beyond 72 hours

Any stay longer than 72 hours must be registered with OVIR, the visa and registration service. In practice, if you sleep in hotels, the hotel does it for you and hands you a small slip. Keep every single one, for every night, until you have left the country.

Why the obsession with paperwork? Because those slips can be requested during administrative procedures and cross-checked against hotel and train records. A gap in the chain and you will be asked to explain where you slept that night. Private hosts can register guests online at emehmon.uz, but not all of them do.

In practice: if you are thinking of staying with locals or in a short-term rental, ask about registration before you book. It is one of the few genuinely good reasons to favour a registered property for the whole trip.

3. Your phone has to be declared at customs

Almost no guide mentions this one. You must declare your phone’s IMEI number to customs on arrival, then register it with UzIMEI within 30 days, online or at a counter, for 75,000 soums. An unregistered handset used with a local SIM is blocked after 30 days.

Unblocking is expensive: the equivalent of 30 % of the phone’s new price, payable to customs. On a 12-day trip with a local SIM you stay under the 30-day threshold, but the declaration on arrival is still the rule. The full procedure matters most for stays longer than a month.

4. Vapes banned, drones banned

Electronic cigarettes have been banned since 1 April 2026. This is not a restriction on where you can use them, it is a ban. If you vape, leave the kit at home. Drones are prohibited too, which is worth taking seriously in a country where historic sites are guarded and the Afghan border is a sensitive zone.

5. Medication: bring a translated prescription

Medicines must be declared, with an original prescription translated into Uzbek, Russian or English. Some molecules that are routine in Europe are classed as narcotics there, Tramadol among them. If you are on any treatment, have the prescription translated before you leave. Twenty minutes of paperwork against the risk of prosecution.

6. Carpets and antiques: the export certificate

You are going to walk past carpets. A lot of carpets. Exporting antiques and works of art requires authorisation from the Ministry of Culture, and taking an antique out without that document can lead to prosecution. Carpets and other valuable items need a certificate, which the seller can provide. Ask for it at the point of sale, never afterwards.

On currency, sums above the equivalent of 100 million soums must be declared, in whatever currency. On the way out you have to be able to account for any increase over the amount you declared on arrival.

When to go: two windows, and one season to avoid

Uzbekistan has a dry continental climate. Brutal summers, hard winters, and two short shoulder seasons that hold everything worth having.

If you can only pick one month, make it May or September. May for the green and the roses of Samarkand, September for the fruit and a late-afternoon light that makes the blue tilework look unreal. These temperature ranges come from climate aggregators rather than an official meteorological service: treat them as orders of magnitude, not guarantees.

One detail that changes everything for accommodation: May and September are also the two months when the historic-centre hotels fill up first. If you are aiming for those dates, lock in your nights several weeks ahead, especially in Khiva where the number of rooms inside the walls is very small.

Getting to Tashkent

Uzbekistan Airways flies non-stop from Paris Charles-de-Gaulle to Tashkent, flight HY251, with a flying time of roughly 6h45 to 7h55 depending on winds. The real constraint is not the fare, it is the frequency: about two rotations a week. The non-stop exists, but it dictates your dates.

Connecting options are plentiful and often cheaper, and they work from almost anywhere: Turkish Airlines via Istanbul, flydubai via Dubai, Air Astana via Almaty. Istanbul remains the most comfortable hub for timings and connections.

A trap worth knowing: the non-stop lands in Tashkent around 05:45 local time. That is a brutal arrival. Book somewhere that can handle a very early check-in, or you will spend your first morning sitting in a lobby. Large hotels deal with this far better than guesthouses.

Schedules and frequencies shift with the season, and comparison sites are unreliable on this. Check the airline’s own calendar before you commit to dates.

The train is the backbone of this trip

This is the most structurally important part of the article. In Uzbekistan the train is not a picturesque option, it is the logical way to move between the four cities: fast, punctual, comfortable, cheap. The road, by contrast, is the single biggest risk of the trip, with accidents that are frequent and sometimes fatal, above all at night.

The three trains that matter

• Afrosiyob, the high-speed service, numbers 759 to 780. Tashkent to Samarkand in about 2h30, with some sets continuing to Bukhara. Three classes, VIP, Business and Economy, with a restaurant car.
• Jaloliddin Manguberdi, train 752, which runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This is the one that goes all the way to Khiva: Tashkent 07:00, Samarkand 09:13, Bukhara 10:54, arriving Khiva 14:31. Economy and VIP only.
• Sharq and the night trains, slower and cheaper. Sleeping berths come as SV (2 berths), kupe (4 berths) and platskartny (open-plan bunks).

Khiva’s new station is about a thirty-minute walk from the old town. Entirely doable with a light bag, considerably less so dragging a large suitcase over cobbles.

How to book, and why you should do it early

The official site is eticket.railway.uz, with an English toggle at the top right. Uzbek Railways also has a mobile app for booking and displaying tickets. The agencies 12go.asia and bookaway.com cover most trains and accept foreign cards, which is a useful fallback when the official site refuses your payment, as it sometimes does.

Seats go on sale 60 days ahead, sometimes less, and you cannot book before that window opens. The Afrosiyob services sell out first. The safe rule is to book at least one or two weeks out, and considerably earlier for a trip in May or September.

Fares, in soums

These fares and timings come from Seat61, the global reference on rail travel, rather than from Uzbek Railways itself. Check them again on eticket.railway.uz when you book. For scale, 311,000 soums is in the order of 20 to 25 euros depending on the day’s rate.

The 12-day itinerary, stop by stop

This itinerary follows the logic of the railway and works the Silk Road from east to west, from the modern capital out to the desert. It is built to avoid the classic Uzbekistan mistake: marching through monuments at speed and coming home feeling you visited a museum rather than a country.

Days 1 and 2: Tashkent, the capital everyone underrates

Tashkent has a poor reputation among travellers in a hurry, who cross it in half a day. That is a mistake. The 1966 earthquake flattened much of the old city, and the Soviets rebuilt it as a modernist capital, wide and green, with a metro whose stations are decorated like palaces. For decades photographing them was forbidden, because the metro doubled as an air-raid shelter. The ban has been lifted and it is now one of the finest free visits in Central Asia.

• The Hazrati Imam complex, home to the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest known Quranic manuscripts.
• Chorsu bazaar and its turquoise dome, in the morning, for the spices and the mountains of dried fruit.
• The metro, in particular Kosmonavtlar, Alisher Navoi and Pakhtakor stations.
• The Museum of Applied Arts, housed in a former Russian diplomat’s mansion, to learn what suzani embroidery is before you buy one in Bukhara.

Two nights is enough, and they also absorb the time difference, which is four hours ahead of Paris in summer and three in winter.

Where to stay. This is the city where the accommodation choice is most purely practical. After a 05:45 arrival, comfort beats charm. The Hilton Tashkent City is the no-surprises option: central, a pool, and above all a front desk used to overnight arrivals and early check-ins. It is not a hotel with character, it is a decompression chamber, and that is exactly what day one calls for.

If you would rather save the budget for Bukhara’s merchant houses, Tashkent is also where you get the most hotel for your money. Compare what is available in Tashkent for your dates before deciding: the gap between a decent three-star and a five-star is often narrower than you would expect.

Days 3 to 5: Samarkand, and why three nights rather than two

The 07:00 departure, or one of the morning Afrosiyob services, puts you in Samarkand around 09:00 or 10:00. You have the whole day ahead of you.

Samarkand is the most photographed city in Central Asia and also the one that most disappoints travellers who give it a single night. The reason is simple: the sites are far apart, separated by wide avenues, and the city has been heavily reshaped for tourism. It takes time to reach anything beyond the postcard.

• The Registan, the three madrasas around the square. Worth seeing twice: once late in the day when the stone is warm, once at opening time when the courtyards are empty.
• Shah-i-Zinda, the necropolis built as a narrow lane. The most affecting site in the city by a distance. Go early, before 08:30: the raking light is spectacular and the crowds arrive around 10:00.
• The Bibi-Khanym mosque and, directly opposite, Siyob bazaar, the real one, where Samarkand actually does its shopping.
• The Gur-e-Amir, Tamerlane’s mausoleum, small but decoratively dense in a way few buildings are.
• Ulugh Beg’s observatory, the remains of the giant sextant built by a fifteenth-century astronomer who measured the length of the year to within a minute.
• Konigil, on the outskirts, a workshop still making mulberry paper by the medieval method. The least visited stop and one of the most interesting.

The third night is the one that changes the trip. It lets you do Shah-i-Zinda at opening without sacrificing something else, and gives you half a day for whatever is not on the official list.

Where to stay, and the trade-off to settle. In Samarkand you have two options and they exclude each other.

Either you prioritise location, and sleep in the old centre so you can walk out before breakfast. The Bibikhanum Hotel earns its name: it sits between the Bibi-Khanym mosque and Siyob bazaar, which puts Shah-i-Zinda and the Registan within walking distance. This is the address to aim for if your goal is to be on site when the gates open. In a simpler, more sociable register, Jahongir B&B is an institution among independent travellers, with a courtyard where you always end up comparing itineraries with someone.

Or you prioritise comfort, and accept losing the proximity. Silk Road by Minyoun belongs to the large tourist complex built away from the historic centre. The standard is in another league and the setting is immaculate, but you are several kilometres from the Registan and you will be taking a taxi every time you go out. An excellent choice if you are travelling as a couple and comfort counts as much as the monuments, a poor one if you want to be out shooting the 06:30 light.

My advice, if you are torn: take the historic centre. In Samarkand, location is worth more than the extra star, because the two best hours of the day fall before 09:00 and after 18:00, when taxis are scarce and the sites are deserted.

The map above shows what is available around Samarkand’s historic centre. Play with the zoom to see the real distance to the Registan, which is the criterion that matters most here.

Days 6 to 8: Bukhara, the city where you should slow down

Samarkand impresses, Bukhara moves you. The difference is one of scale: Bukhara’s old town is a continuous urban fabric of lanes, converted caravanserais, pools and merchant houses. You can walk across it in twenty minutes and spend three days there without running out.

• The Poi-Kalon, the ensemble of the Kalon minaret, the mosque and the Mir-i-Arab madrasa. The minaret is said to have impressed Genghis Khan enough that he ordered it spared.
• The Ark, the emirs’ citadel, for the view over the city from the ramparts.
• Lyabi-Hauz, the pool ringed by century-old mulberry trees, where the old men play backgammon in the late afternoon. It is the city’s living room.
• The Samanid mausoleum, a tenth-century cube of brick with no tilework and no gold, and probably the finest building in the country.
• Chor Minor, the little four-towered gatehouse, off to one side in a residential quarter.
• The three toqs, the market domes where hatmakers, money changers and jewellers once traded. Still shops today.

Bukhara is also the best city in the country for buying: embroidered suzani, stork-shaped scissors, miniatures. As noted in point 6 above, ask for the certificate on anything of value.

Where to stay. Bukhara is where sleeping in a restored house genuinely means something, because the domestic architecture is as much the heritage as the monuments are. Boutique Hotel Minzifa occupies a merchant’s house in the lanes of the old centre, with a roof terrace looking out over the domes. Sasha & Son plays the same card, in a courtyard house near Lyabi-Hauz.

An honest warning about these historic houses: the rooms are often small, the stairs steep and narrow, and the heating uneven out of season. That is the price of the charm. If you are travelling with heavy luggage, bad knees or young children, look instead at a conventional property on the edge of the old town.

Compare the guesthouses available in Bukhara and filter on “less than 1 km from centre”. Beyond that you leave the old fabric and lose a good part of what makes the city.

Days 9 and 10: Khiva, and the one argument that matters

The Jaloliddin Manguberdi, which runs only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, links Bukhara to Khiva. Check that calendar very early: it is the constraint that shapes the whole itinerary, and it is what will decide which day you fly out.

Khiva is the smallest and the most intact of the four cities. Itchan Kala, the inner town, is entirely ringed by mud-brick walls and listed as World Heritage. It is sometimes dismissed as an open-air museum, over-restored and too tidy. That criticism is fair if you come as a day tripper.

Here is the one argument that matters for Khiva: sleep inside the walls. Around 18:00 the coaches head back to Urgench and the inner town empties almost completely. You find yourself walking earthen lanes lit by a handful of lamps, with the turquoise Kalta Minor at the end of the street and nobody else around. It is the finest moment of the whole trip, and it is strictly reserved for the people who stay the night.

The problem is that the number of rooms inside the walls is small. This is the city where booking ahead is not a precaution, it is a condition.

Where to stay. The most singular address is Orient Star Khiva, set inside the former Muhammad Amin Khan madrasa, within the walls. The rooms are the old hujra, the student cells of what was once one of the largest Quranic schools in Khiva. To be clear: they are small and low-ceilinged, and that is precisely the point. You are not sleeping next to the heritage, you are sleeping inside it.

For more conventional comfort without leaving the area, Shaherezada Boutique Hotel has larger rooms and better insulation, which counts in April and October when the nights turn cold.

On this map the Itchan Kala enclosure is clearly visible. Anything inside that rectangle of walls gives you the experience described above. Anything outside is a perfectly decent provincial hotel, but you miss the point. Check what is still free inside the walls for your dates, because it goes quickly in high season.

Days 11 and 12: Nukus, the most improbable museum in the world

This is the extension the large majority of travellers skip, which is exactly why it is worth the detour. Nukus, capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, is a charmless Soviet city on the edge of the desert. It also holds the Savitsky Museum.

The story deserves telling. Igor Savitsky, a painter and archaeologist, founded the museum in 1966 and spent years collecting Russian avant-garde works banned by Soviet censorship, routing them to a city so remote that Moscow took no interest. The collection now exceeds 100,000 pieces and is described as the second largest body of Russian avant-garde art in the world, after the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Published opening hours vary by source: the official Uzbek tourism portal gives 9:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, while a French agency reports that it closes on Mondays. I could not confirm this from a single reliable source, so check before making the trip.

From Nukus you can push on to Moynaq, the former Aral Sea port, where the hulls of fishing boats rust on what is now sand. It is a day trip, hard going morally rather than physically, and one of the most direct pieces of evidence anywhere of an ecological disaster caused by people.

Where to stay. The choice is limited, and that is normal, because nobody comes here. Jipek Joli Inn is the reference address for museum visitors, within walking distance of it. See what is available in Nukus if your dates are tight, but do not expect an abundance of options.

Nukus has an airport with flights to Tashkent, which saves you retracing the whole route. That is the right way to close the loop.

Money: the soum, cash and cards

The Uzbek soum cannot be exchanged outside the country. You arrive with none and you leave with none. Change only what you need.

• Visa and Mastercard work in plenty of hotels and restaurants in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. Many terminals, however, accept only the local Uzcard and Humo cards.
• Khiva, Nukus and rural areas run on cash. That is the rule, not the exception.
• ATMs are concentrated in the big cities and airports. Several traveller reports describe withdrawals failing about half the time. The banks most often named for foreign-card withdrawals are NBU, Kapitalbank, Hamkorbank and Ipak Yuli.
• Fees generally run to a flat charge plus 2 to 3 % commission, with caps per transaction or per day.
• Black-market exchange is illegal. Change at an official bureau or a bank, and keep your receipts.

The sensible strategy: arrive with euros or dollars in clean banknotes, change as you go at banks, and count on your card only in the large cities. This comes from travel guides and traveller reports rather than an official banking source, so check your own limits and fees with your bank before you leave.

A real budget for 12 days

What follows is an estimate for one person, travelling independently, with mid-range accommodation and Economy-class trains. These are orders of magnitude built from the verified elements in this article and the ranges travellers report, not contractual prices. They are given in euros, which is the currency the estimates were built in.

The site entry fees could not be verified against an official source and are indicative only: Uzbek monument prices change every year and vary depending on whether you pay for the site or for each building separately.

Uzbekistan remains a country where money goes a long way. The line item that runs away from you fastest is not accommodation, it is taxis, because they are cheap enough that you end up taking ten a day. Use the Yandex Go app in the larger cities to avoid haggling every time.

Safety: what the French foreign ministry actually says

Uzbekistan is a safe country for travellers, and that is worth stating plainly, because its location on the map worries people unnecessarily. The ministry’s security page, updated on 15 September 2026, describes a calm situation, a structured police presence, and secured major tourist sites, naming Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Nukus and Kokand.

Zones formally advised against

• The border strip with Afghanistan, including inside Termez, unless travel there is imperative. Tensions and sudden clashes are possible, and two rocket strikes from Afghan territory hit Uzbekistan in 2022. The Termez-Hairatan Friendship Bridge, the only crossing into Afghanistan, is closed to foreigners.
• The approaches to the Tajik and Kyrgyz borders away from official crossing points, because of mine risk. Do not leave the towns or the main roads in those mountainous areas.
• The Hissar foothills and the Sariasiyo site, in Surkhandarya province, require prior authorisation from the Uzbek authorities and a justification for the trip.

The rest of the country

Everywhere else sits at heightened vigilance, the normal level for a Central Asian country. General crime is low, but night-time assaults on foreigners have been reported and pickpocketing happens on public transport. The advice is the usual: no ostentation, valuables in the safe, licensed taxis, no walking alone at night.

Women travelling alone are advised to wear covering clothing including the shoulders, to avoid isolated places especially after dark, and to stay cautious in social contacts. Finally, a terrorist threat cannot be ruled out given regional tensions.

The real statistical risk of the trip, though, is the road: accidents are frequent and sometimes fatal, particularly at night, involving pedestrians, cyclists, livestock and vehicles stopped with their lights off. That is the strongest reason of all to make this journey by train rather than by car.

The mistakes that cost you

• Booking the trains too late. Sales open 60 days ahead and the Afrosiyob services go first. This is the first thing to lock in after the flight.
• Ignoring the Khiva train calendar. The 752 runs three days a week. Build your dates around it, not the other way round.
• Throwing away the registration slips. They can be asked for and cross-checked right up to the moment you leave the country.
• Packing your vape. Banned since 1 April 2026.
• Giving Khiva one night, outside the walls. That means missing the one thing Khiva does better than anywhere else.
• Counting on your bank card everywhere. Khiva and Nukus run on cash.
• Buying a carpet without the certificate. The exit check is strict.
• Doing Samarkand in two nights. The sites open and close at the hours when the city is beautiful, and you need slack.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a visa for Uzbekistan?

French nationals do not, for stays of 30 days or less. Beyond that a visa is required, through the Uzbek embassy in Paris. The passport must stay valid for six months after the planned return date. Other nationalities are treated differently, so check your own government’s advice.

How many days do you need?

Ten days cover Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva without rushing. Twelve to fourteen let you add Nukus and the Aral Sea, or simply breathe. Below eight days you are chaining trains and seeing nothing but monuments.

Is English spoken in Uzbekistan?

Not much, outside hotel staff and guides. Russian remains the language that bridges generations and Uzbek is the language of daily life. An offline translation app is genuinely useful, and a few words of Russian open a lot of doors.

Is it suitable for women travelling alone?

Broadly yes, and many women do travel there alone. The French foreign ministry nonetheless recommends covering clothing, avoiding isolated places after dark, and caution in social contacts.

Can you drink the tap water?

No. Bottled water everywhere, including for brushing your teeth in the smaller towns. Green tea, served constantly, is the country’s default drink and carries no risk.

What is the one dish not to miss?

Plov: rice with mutton, yellow carrots and quince, cooked in a giant kazan. Every region has its version and the rivalry between Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara is an inexhaustible conversation topic. Eat it at lunchtime, which is when it is actually made.

In short

Uzbekistan is one of the rare destinations where the gap between perceived difficulty and real difficulty is this wide. No visa for many travellers, a modern rail network, a low cost of living, decent safety, and a built heritage with no equal between Istanbul and Xi’an. What makes it demanding is the administrative detail, and all of it is set out above.

Two decisions come first, in this order: the calendar of train 752 to Khiva, because it runs only three days a week, and then the nights inside the walls of Itchan Kala, because there are few of them and they will be the best memory you bring home. The rest arranges itself.